


Mitigating Damages

by Flyting



Series: Rumbelle/Dark One OT3 [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, I might have made it sad, I'm Sorry, Multi, OT3, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 05:36:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5035870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flyting/pseuds/Flyting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle/Rumplestiltskin/The Dark One OT3. In which Rumple has a minor accident and the Dark One has a minor panic attack.</p><p>Prompted by DeweyMay: "Rumple is involved in a car accident or something of the sort and ends up in the hospital. The DO is mad bc he was not called. He is suddenly hit with the realization that Rumple is now mortal and someday he will lose them...cue ultra clingy DO freaking out."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mitigating Damages

The Storybrooke Hospital still made Belle uneasy. Every time she walked in, there was always a little part of her that worried they wouldn’t let her back out.  
  
She picks up a magazine to distract herself from the dry smell of antiseptic and the squeak of rubber on linoleum. _Better Homes and Gardens,_ the fading cover read. _November 1993._ Beneath the title, it promised to teach her how to create decorating magic.

Belle tosses the magazine back on the little table next to her chair, not quite in a mood to appreciate the irony.

She’s read it already, anyway.  It was here the last time she visited too.  
  
Come to think of it, she hadn’t much appreciated the irony then either.

Before she can check the clock for the fifth time tonight, there is a thunder of rapid footsteps coming her way from down the hall. She looks up in alarm, worry spiking in her chest, but it’s not coming from the direction they took Rumplestiltskin.

Doctor Whale turns the corner at a run. He skids to a stop when he catches sight of her.  
  
“Belle!” he pants, waving one hand back in the direction he came from. “We, uh- we need you in the lobby. _Now_.”  
  
“What’s wrong?”  
  
“There’s… we have a situation.”  
  
She follows him quickly, her heels clattering on the hard floor. When they reach the swinging double doors that lead to the lobby he falls back, letting her continue ahead of him. He doesn’t need to explain further. She can see through the windows in the doorway exactly what the _situation_ is.  
  
In the hospital entryway, the Dark One’s magic has everyone- staff and patients alike- pinned up against the walls, their feet dangling two feet off the ground. Some are frozen in place, others clutching their throats and gasping for breath. One of the orderlies lies crumpled on the floor, unmoving but apparently breathing, next to an overturned rack of chairs.  
  
“You must not have heard me. Let me put it more simply,” the Dark One says. He turns a slow circle in the center of the room, one hand upraised. _“The first person who tells me where he is gets to live._ Now, don’t all raise your hands at once. _”_  
  
His voice bright, singsong, but underneath the playfulness there is a brittle edge that sounds to Belle like panic.

“Stop it right now. You put them down.” Belle says sternly, stepping close to him.  
  
“Belle!” There is something that might have been relief when he catches sight of her. “Tell me what’s happened. There was a message-“  
  
“Not until you let everybody go.”  
  
“But none of them answered my question,” he bites out, eyes darting to his captives, with a hint malicious glee. His clenched hand flexes and a few people groan in pain.  
  
Belle puts her hands on either side of his face, forcing him to look at her. It chagrined her a little to realize that Whale was right to come straight to her. She was an old hand at talking down the Dark One. In whatever body he occupied. Of course, without Rumplestiltskin- who she could trust to at least have a bit of decency in him, no matter how buried it was- in there too she had had to change her tactics a little.  
  
 “Listen to me,” she says, as calm and reasonable as she can manage. “If you kill all these people, then someone is going to call Emma and Regina. I’m going to have to go get the dagger. There’s going to be a big, long fight, and _you won’t get to see him_. Or,” she puts one hand slowly over his upraised fist, pushing gently, urging him to lower it. “You can put everybody down and we’ll go right now.”

He gives her a long, measuring stare. Considering. During which, you could cut the tension in the room with a knife  
  
Belle holds his gaze without easing the steady, insistent pressure on his hand.  
  
After a moment, his hand unclenches; drops. There is a heavy, painful-sounding _thud_ as a dozen people’s bodies all hit the floor at the same time. She darts a glance around, but no one appears to be injured. Most of them are already clamoring for the exit.  
  
The Dark One waits expectantly in front of her, bouncing on his heels.  
  
“Thank you,” Belle says. She winds her arm around his, walking them both to the nurse’s desk. The woman cowers a little behind the counter as they approach, but doesn’t run away.  
  
Belle cleared her throat. “We would like to go and see Rumplestiltskin, please.”  
  
It was well past visitation hours. The head nurse looming behind the woman seems tempted to complain, but in the end, when came to hospital visitation rules, Belle supposed that having the living embodiment of dark magic on her arm was an all-access pass.  
  
The woman taps on her keyboard. “Down there and to the left. Through the second set of doors. C 12.” She points a shaky finger back the way Belle came. “B-but he’s not in there. It looks like they took him for a CT scan.”

“What’s that?” Belle asks, frowning.  
  
“It’s normal after an accident where there might be head trauma. They just take a few pictures of the brain. It’s completely harmless,” she adds quickly, at the Dark One’s piqued interest.  
  
“And this test will tell if there’s swelling, bleeding of the brain, that sort of thing?” he asks, to Belle’s surprise.  
  
The woman nods quickly.  
  
“How clever.”  
  
“You can wait in his room if you want?” she says to Belle. “Or there are some chairs around the corner there. It won’t take long.”  
  
“Thank you,” Belle says, tugging him away from the desk before the woman collapses in fear. She leads him back to the waiting area where she’d been sitting before his dramatic arrival.

“I didn’t know you’d studied medicine,” she says, to break the tight silence between them.  
  
“I haven’t. But I have killed quite a lot of people. You tend to pick things up.”  
  
Belle sits in one of the hard plastic chairs. After a moment, he sits beside her.  
  
There are times when it’s easy to forget that he isn’t the Rumplestiltskin she knew. Easy to let herself be misled by his familiar face and voice, by the things he says.  
  
This isn’t one of them. The Dark One is still, in a way that Rumplestiltskin never was. In their world, Rumplestiltskin was all fidgeting hands and quick bursts of excited movement. Sitting beside her with his hands on his knees, seemingly deep in thought, the Dark One may as well be made of stone. He doesn’t blink. He barely breathes.  
  
Which is why it startles Belle when, several minutes later, he asks, “Well, are you going to tell me what happened?”

“I’m not sure,” she says after a moment. “Not sure what happened, that is. They told me that the car slid on a patch of ice and hit a tree. But he seems alright. I saw him just before they brought him in-“  
  
“You weren’t with him? You were supposed to be with him.”  
  
“I was at the library. He dropped me off on the way to-“  
  
He makes a sound of frustration, launching himself out of the chair in a sudden burst of frenetic energy.  
  
“I knew I should never have let him keep you,” he snarls, pacing. “You’re supposed to take care of him. What good are you, if you can’t even be there to protect him, now that I’m-“  
  
His voice trails off, suddenly tight.  
  
“I can’t be there to protect him every minute of the day. Neither of us can.” It’s an effort to keep her voice even, to keep the irritation at his harsh words from leeching in, but she manages.  
  
He is silent, facing away from her. Belle stares at the line of his back for a long moment. He’s wearing one of Rumplestiltskin’s suits again; the charcoal gray one.  
  
 “It isn’t hard, you know. Killing people,” he says, quietly. To her surprise, there is no malicious pleasure in the words. He sounds almost plaintive. “You’re fragile. There are so many different ways to break you.”  
  
It takes Belle a moment to parse the meaning beneath the words. She stands, approaching him like he’s a wild animal prepared to take flight at any moment, until she can lay a gentle hand on his shoulder. “He’s going to be fine.”  
  
“For how long? A year? A decade?” In that moment, he sounds as cold and ancient as the stars themselves. “They’re all dead. All the rest of them. Sooner or later, he will be too. And then I’ll be alone.”  
  
For the first time, Belle wonders how many other Dark Ones there were before Rumplestiltskin. How many generations had come and gone in its existence?  
  
Slowly, carefully, she slides her arms around his waist, hugging him from behind. To her surprise, he pivots in her loose embrace, turning so that he can wind his arms around her in turn. He clings to her, hands stroking her back the way she always sees him do with Rumplestiltskin.  
  
Against his shoulder she murmurs, “You’re not alone now. Rumplestiltskin isn’t going anywhere just yet. And neither am I.”  
  
  



End file.
